


Drive

by 8611



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anthropomorphic, Cars, Character Death, F/F, Road Trips, Surfing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 06:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1335913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cammy meets her in a Dairy Queen in Amarillo. Roscoe’s already gotten her a Blizzard with Oreo bits, and Cammy just slides into the booth, puts her feet up on the opposite seat, and tears into the Blizzard with some degree of ferocity. </p><p>(or, the one where the Camaro and the Jeep go on an extended road trip and fall for each other along the way.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drive

**Author's Note:**

> So as of last night’s episode the premise for this is jossed, but whatever. I wrote it over the weekend before we knew what was going to happen. The character death isn't either of the cars.
> 
> Also, this is easily the weirdest thing I’ve ever had to preface a fic with, but: I promise the Camaro isn’t underage. In my head she’s like mid-20s. 
> 
> Also also, [Cammy and Roscoe](http://strawberrysurfers.tumblr.com/post/79626453327/so-a-camaro-and-roscoe-walk-into-a-bar), although Roscoe’s a bit older than that. 
> 
> Beta'd by the ever amazing [verity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity). <3!
> 
> \---

She’s coming out of the rest stop, a map held between her teeth as she digs in her dress pockets for her keys -- not that she particularly needs them -- when the payphone to her right rings. Somehow, she just knows it’s for her. 

“‘ello?” She asks after she picks it up, map still held in her mouth. She takes the map in her hand, wedges the phone between her cheek and shoulder, and resumes her key search with her free hand. 

“ _You’re not answering your cellphone,_ ” the person on the other end says. 

“Oh, dude, sorry -” she fishes around in her other pocket, pulling out her phone. It’s on silent, and she’s got three missed calls from Cammy. She didn’t know that Cammy had her number, let alone that she was walking and talking these days, but it’s not particularly surprising, either. 

“ _Where are you?_ ” Cammy asks. She sounds kind of rough. 

“Well.” She’s not anywhere in particular, at the moment. “On I-40, outside Amarillo.” 

Cammy rumbles on the other end of the phone, something that still sounds a little bit too mechanical to be fully human, and then sighs. 

“ _I’ll find you,_ ” she says, and hangs up, leaving Roscoe standing with the dial-tone in a dusty rest stop parking lot. 

\---

(She’s had three owners. The first one was a tall, blonde man with wide palms that sat comfortably on her wheel. He hummed along, slightly off key, to cassettes like Dick Dale and The Chantays, music almost older than him, and she liked him and his wetsuits and surf wax. She stuck with him all through college, through hundreds of trips to the beach, through a girlfriend who Roscoe thought he was going to end up with. Claudia was sunny and vibrant, had amber eyes and a wide smile. She was the one who gave Roscoe her name. 

They broke up when the surfer boy became an accountant and moved to New York. He sold Roscoe to Claudia though, and Roscoe was ok with that. She had lost his boards and the sand he’d track everywhere, but Roscoe came to love Claudia and her summer grins. 

Claudia’s only child, just as bright as she was, was a welcome addition. He snuck into the garage, sometimes, when he was barely tall enough to reach her door handle, and stood on her seats and pretended to drive around, making engine noises and laughing. 

Stiles came to her after Claudia had died, with his hair shorn and his eyes rimmed in red. He was taller by then, and slipped into the driver’s seat and rested his hands on the wheel right where Claudia used to hold it. 

“Hey, Roscoe,” he said, voice quiet, rough and splintered. “Mom’s gone.”

He cried then, and she tried to hold him as tightly as she could, wishing that she could break away from the metal and rubber and leather and hold him in her arms. 

After that, Roscoe belonged to Stiles. He was the last to drive her, for almost two years.

The Sheriff drove her to Stiles’ funeral. After that, she was left under a tarp in the garage for a long time.) 

\---

Cammy meets her in a Dairy Queen in Amarillo. Roscoe’s already gotten her a Blizzard with Oreo bits, and Cammy just slides into the booth, puts her feet up on the opposite seat, and tears into the Blizzard with some degree of ferocity. 

“You’ll get a brain freeze,” Roscoe points out, raising her eyebrows. Cammy just glowers over the top of her Blizzard. 

“Derek’s gone,” Cammy says. Roscoe had figured as much, if Cammy was here. It was only after Stiles had died that Roscoe has been able to slip away from the metal skin she’d always known. 

“I’m sorry,” Roscoe says. She honestly does mean it. Dark and brooding or not, Derek was still Cammy’s owner, and still cared about her, still took care of her and let her take care of him. 

“Always knew he’d go down doing something stupid,” Cammy says, shoving another spoonful of Blizzard into her mouth. Her make-up looks like it’s been smudged, like maybe she’d driven all night and rubbed at tired eyes. “Son of a bitch got axed throwing himself in front of Scott.”

“He died protecting his alpha,” Roscoe says, and sits back, knitting her fingers together behind her head. “That’s not a bad death.”

Cammy stares at her with hard eyes and licks her lips. Roscoe just stares back. 

“I’m going to go clean up,” Cammy says, jerking her head towards the bathroom. Roscoe looks out the window at the cars in the parking lot while she’s gone, and thinks about the other kids that had made up that pack, all with their bright eyes and strong minds. Scott’s still alive, at least. She wonders about Allison and Lydia, about Isaac, about the other Hales. Roscoe drifted away so many years ago, when the kids truly were still kids, not the adults grown that they had to be by now. 

Cammy comes back with her make-up fixed and her hood up, and she sits down heavily, leaning her arms on the table. 

“I didn’t know where else to go,” she admits quietly. Roscoe leans forward far enough to brush some of Cammy’s hair out of her face, offering her a small smile. 

They don’t talk much after that, and when they get back to the parking lot they bypass the Mustang that Cammy hotwired to get here and climb into Roscoe’s little blue pickup instead. 

\---

(After Stiles died, she decided to slip away.

She stood in the garage, brushing sand and dirt and blood and rust off her dress and stomping the caked-on mud from her boots. 

Stiles had left an old backpack in the garage, and so she grabbed that, packed a few things from the disaster kit in the corner, now covered in dust and cobwebs, and then took Stiles’ secret stash of rumpled 20 dollar bills from under the passenger seat. 

She hitchhiked to the Bay area, where she found an old salvage yard full of just what she was looking for. She climbed the fence, half-falling over the other side, landing a bit hard in the dirt. Still getting her sea legs, as it were. 

There were plenty of cars in the yard that had long ago given up on ever starting again, feeling the rumble of the road under their tires, but she found one that still had a bit of life in it. A deep blue Rabbit pickup still in possession of both headlamps, all four tires, and some fighting spirit.

She ran a hand along the hood, placed a palm on the driver’s side door, and asked the car if it minded going a little bit further, for a little bit longer. 

The gas tank was long empty and the keys long gone, but that didn’t mean much to Roscoe. When she stopped to fill it up the first time, the keys showed up on the passenger seat, tucked into the cushions, and that was good enough for her.)

\---

They sit in the back of the truck, legs hanging over the tailgate, and pass a bottle of gin back and forth. The moon is out early, pale in the sky as the sun sets, and it’s edging on full. A week more, maybe, and it’ll be a wolf moon again. 

“I’m such a sad sack,” Cammy says, taking another swig and screwing up her face at the burn. “Here I am, blubbering like an idiot because some fucking werewolf went and got himself killed.”

“He was _your_ werewolf,” Roscoe points out. 

“I bet you didn’t do this when Stiles died,” Cammy grumbles. When she passes the bottle back Roscoe takes it, knows she should stop, but doesn’t. 

“That was a long time ago,” Roscoe says, because even after all these years it’s not something she likes to talk about. She still can’t quite deal with Claudia’s death, and Stiles’ is even more immediate, a fresher wound. 

“Sorry,” Cammy says. She kicks at Roscoe’s boot with one of her own, slick laced-up ones. Privately, Roscoe thinks that Cammy is the badass that Derek wished he could be, with his sneakers and his too-big leather coats. Even when they were still made of angular metal, Roscoe thought that. 

“Don’t apologize,” Roscoe says with a shrug. 

The next day, when the sun is coming up, Roscoe turns the truck around and faces them west. 

“I don’t want to go home,” Cammy says. She glares at Roscoe from where she’s curled up against the passenger door. 

“We’re not going home,” Roscoe says, and they ride I-40 all the way into Barstow and then head south. 

\---

(Roscoe drove aimlessly for months, going here and there, exploring the country because she wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to do for herself now. She stopped in coffee shops and road-side diners and sat by the window with a cup of tea, but otherwise she just drove.

She left the car sometimes, hiked through the mountains with her pack and not much else, but most of the time it was her and the Rabbit. She watched the sun rise, squinting into the lazy orange sky, watched it set in her rearview mirror, and did it all again. When she was far enough from civilization to see them, she’d park and climb on to the roof of the car, lying back and watching the stars for hours.

Claudia and Stiles were on her mind often, as much as she tried to push it all down and away. She was more successful some days than others, but even on good days she saw things that reminded her of them. The day she swung into a rest stop parking lot and parked next to a blue Jeep -- one of the new ones, heavy and soulless -- she had to put a hand out against the Rabbit to stay upright, gulping down breaths. 

Time wore on. Any time she found herself on the coast -- both of them, all of them, anywhere with waves -- she pulled the board and wetsuit she’d found along the way out from under the tarp in the back of the truck and head for the water. There was a tin of wax that sat on her dash, always full somehow, not unlike the pickup’s gas tank.

Surfing reminded her of the boy who had owned her first, with his blond hair and sun-kissed skin, freckles across the bridge of his nose, framing his too-bright blue eyes. She hoped that he, at least, was alive somewhere, with a family and maybe a dog, out on the East Coast. She wondered if he still ever hit the waves, let the water swallow him up and then carry him back home to shore. 

She learned to be human out on the water, the chill against her skin beautiful and the board under her a lifeline.)

\---

They run into another Chevy at a non-descript bar in Los Angeles. She’s sitting at the bar next to the chalkboard on the wall that outlines all the different burgers and flavors of pie they’re offering that day. The bright, pleased writing is at odds with the slouched indifference the woman is projecting. 

She looks up when they walk in, the quick turn of her head making her LEGO-block earrings swing. She’s older than them, has seen more miles than both of them combined, and there are strange tattoos inked across her collarbones and shoulders. 

“Don’t just stand there, kids,” she calls, and pats the stool next to her. Roscoe can feel Cammy behind her, almost hanging back. Roscoe gets that, in a way. She’s never met anyone else like her, and now here’s this Chevy with her tattoos and leather and scars, the fully-realized adult to Cammy’s little-girl self. 

“Hi,” Roscoe says, smiles at the woman. “I’m Roscoe, this is Cammy.” 

“This would be a great joke,” the woman says. “Two Chevys and a Jeep walk into a bar…”

That startles a laugh out of Cammy, and she sneaks around Roscoe, sitting down in the stool next to the woman. Roscoe leans on her shoulder, in no hurry to sit down. She’s never been very good at that part of being human, just sitting and staying somewhere for a while. Wandering is more her thing. 

“I’ve never met anyone else like us,” Cammy says, leaning closer to the woman. 

“It happens, you cross paths sometimes,” the woman says. Takes a drink of the whiskey she’s got in front of her. “But not often. You two must have run with some serious sparks to be so young and so alive.” 

“Just a werewolf and a human,” Cammy says. 

“In my experience, there’s never a _just_ about any of our owners,” the woman says.

Roscoe thinks of the starlight that ran through Stiles’ veins, the way his whole soul felt open, like it was just waiting for something to settle into it and make it sing. Claudia never felt that way, but Roscoe felt it from some of the others - the wolves, Lydia. 

“Mine was… he had something in his soul,” Roscoe says, shrugs because it sounds weird. But the woman just tilts her head to one side, a soft smile on her face. 

“They all do,” she says. “They both died protecting other people, didn’t they?” 

“Did yours?” Cammy asks, the words almost punched out of her, and Roscoe can see the twist to her face where Derek’s death is still too near to the surface of her skin. 

“One did,” the woman says. “The other handed over my keys to a girl named Charlie and left. Don’t know what ever happened to him. But they both sacrificed themselves. That’s what makes us _this_.” 

“We’re shadows,” Roscoe realizes. 

“No,” the woman says, shakes her head. “We’re legacies.” 

\---

The woman’s name is Baby, and she comes with them when they head out, after Cammy wheedles and pokes and prods, because she wants to know _everything_. 

She doesn’t have a car, and when they ask her about it, she just smirks. 

“There are other ways to get around besides driving,” she says. 

“You _walk_ everywhere?” Cammy asks, looking totally disgusted. 

“Nope,” Baby says, and winks. No matter how much Cammy whines, Baby won’t spill. 

Cammy gets stuck in the jump seat wedged in the back, and she leans on Baby’s seat, arm thrown over the back, almost touching Baby’s shoulder, and asks her question after question. 

“You really don’t know what happened to the guy?” 

“Nope. He just walked off, pack on his back, like he’s always done.”

“What about Charlie, is she dead?”

“No, but she and I reached an accord that I was better like this than as a car.”

“You can do that?”

“I did.” 

“But do you think anyone else could?” 

“I don’t have a great sample size to experiment with.” 

Baby’s still smiling through it all though, this unflappable trickster with so many miles beat into her boots. 

Roscoe wonders if she’ll be like that someday, or if Baby’s an outside case. She’s seen every corner of the country, ever road that’s drivable, every tiny town and road-side bar and slice of life. 

They walk down a pier with a diner at the end of it after sunset, Roscoe with an arm around Cammy because she’s been getting a little bit weird in the dark, and the moon is full now. There’s no logical reason why Cammy should feel the pull of it, but she still does, and Roscoe can feel the vibrations under Cammy’s skin where they’re pressed together from shoulder to hip. 

“You two family?” Baby asks, staring off over the water when they stop near the end of the pier to lean on the rough wooden railing. 

“Our owners weren’t,” Roscoe says. She keeps having to tug her hair back from where the breeze off the waves is tangling it across her face. 

“That doesn’t mean much,” Baby says. 

“They were pack,” Cammy says, voice low. “So that has to count for something.”

They were, for a brief month when everything was ok, when they were strong together. Roscoe knows that counts for more than something, it counts for everything. They were all woven together, even when Stiles’ threads were fraying and his connections splintering under the darkness that had sunk into his heart. 

Roscoe has spent more time than she’d like to admit wondering what would have happened if Stiles had stayed around longer, if having a pack would have healed him. She wishes she knew, wishes she had just _known_ him more. 

“It’s not your fault,” Cammy says, as quiet as before, and leans her head against Roscoe’s. 

“Mind reader,” Roscoe teases, and she can almost feel the answering grin it gets out of Cammy. When she turns to Baby, she’s watching them with open adoration, eyes and mouth soft. There’s something nostalgic about the expression, almost sorrowful. 

“You’re family,” Baby says. 

\---

They’re in a coffee shop tucked into one of the endless neighborhoods in LA when Baby stretches her arms above her head, cracking her shoulders with a smile, and says she’s needed. 

“How d’you know?” Cammy asks, feet up in Roscoe’s lap and long fingers curled around her mug. 

“Just do,” Baby says. Roscoe is reminded of how she’d just known to pick up the payphone, back outside of Amarillo. 

“Need a ride?” Roscoe asks when Baby stands up, but she shakes her head, grinning slightly. 

“I got it,” Baby says. “You two keep safe, you hear?”

“We hear,” Cammy says. Baby offers them a lazy salute and a quick smirk as she walks backwards. A woman with a fussing child walk in front of her, and between one step and the next Baby is just… gone. 

“That’s quite a trick,” Roscoe says, picking up her tea and staring at the empty space where Baby had been. 

“Pretty wild,” Cammy says with a nod. “There’s something special about her.”

“Yeah,” Roscoe says. She lets her head tip back, a little smile hovering on her lips. “Finish up, I think I know where we’re going next.”

“Not north,” Cammy says, and her face is stormy. Roscoe just shakes her head. 

“East,” Roscoe answers. She puts her cup down, watching the last dregs of tea settle into the bottom of the cup. 

\---

They pass through Las Vegas and marvel at the lights, Cammy hanging out her window as they drive down the Strip, the wind in her hair. They only stay for the night, and then they head off onto back roads, following the border between Utah and Arizona best they can. Cammy asks to drive at one point and they stop off on the shoulder, swapping places. 

The car runs a little bit quicker than it ever was supposed to with Cammy at the wheel, the suspension just a little bit too tight for a pick-up and the ride just a little too well controlled. Roscoe can feel the way the center of gravity has shifted in the car, low and wide. 

“Cheater,” Roscoe teases, easy and good natured, and Cammy grins -- all teeth -- over at her from behind her aviators. 

“You might be ok with it driving like a pig,” Cammy says. “But not all of us were Jeeps, Ro.” 

Roscoe just laughs, her head back against her seat and her eyes closed. Cammy gets speed and corners out of the car that it shouldn’t be able to handle, should have them rolling over, but under her hands the car listens, lets itself be lead through sweeping race lines around corners and bends as they scream across the desert, the sun setting at their backs. 

They pass through into river valleys with farm fields snaking out from the banks like a long, rambling oasis, the pavement hazy and hot, and trade off picking the songs on the radio. There aren’t really many stations out here, in the middle of nowhere, but that doesn’t matter much when they’re in a resurrected pickup riding like a muscle car. The radio always seems to be playing exactly what they want, as they pick their way through the fields and then up into the mountains, heading for an endless stretch of state lines. 

“Derek liked this song,” Cammy notes at one point, reaching out to turn it up. It’s rough and industrial, and Roscoe hates it, but that’s not important right now. Roscoe just nods, drumming her fingers along to the bass line, and loves the smile that breaks across Cammy’s face when the chorus kicks in. 

\---

Mountains give way to rolling hills and the flats, and they end up smack dab in the middle of the country, where farm fields and prairies are the only thing for miles. 

It’s somewhere close to Kansas City when Cammy turns off the highway and heads into a small town, straight to an auto shop. Roscoe fights the urge to roll her eyes when she sees why -- there’s a convertible Vette C2, cherry red and gleaming in the bright mid-day light, parked around back. 

“No,” Roscoe says. “The pick-up works fine.”

“Yeah, exactly, _fine_ ,” Cammy says, looking like a cartoon devil as she smirks and rubs her hands together, looming over the hood of the Corvette. “Why have fine when you can have classic? _Sexy_ classic.”

Roscoe knew that she had lost this one the minute they pulled up out front of the shop, and so she just sighs and crosses her arms and gives up on the argument.

“One day, we’re finding another CJ-5,” Roscoe says when they’re speeding out of town, the Rabbit left in the Corvette’s old spot, which they both know no one will bat an eye at. No matter where their cars come from, or how they get them, no one ever gets suspicious or particularly worked up about missing cars. 

“You in that much of a hurry to rattle all your teeth out and get rained on?” Cammy says, raising her eyebrows. 

“It’s nostalgia,” Roscoe says, and wonders what ever happened to the one she’d left behind years and years ago. 

\---

Chicago is already getting cold, but it doesn’t bother them too much. Roscoe just digs a waxed jacket out of Stiles’ ratty backpack where she’s stashed it in the trunk, and they set off, arm in arm, down the main drag. 

They stand in front of a glinting silver bandshell in a park on the lake. The shell looks like it’s bursting at the seams, the round arch of it made of curling plates of metal flayed from the understructure. As the sun sets and the lights of the city start to spring to life, it makes the metal glow thousands of colors, more than Roscoe can count. 

“Claudia was born here,” Roscoe says.

“Right here?” Cammy teases, shit-eating grin firmly in place.

“No,” Roscoe says. She’s laughing as she cuffs Cammy over the head. “Northwest of downtown.”

“You know where?” Cammy asks. 

“Not exactly,” Roscoe says, shaking her head. “Just the area.”

They get on the elevated train through downtown, heading north and west. They mean to go further than they do, but they listen in on the chatter in the car and end up getting off early, walking down the stairs to the street with a teeming mass of sports fans. 

Cammy scores them bleacher seat tickets from a guy on the corner and Roscoe finds a baseball hat, which Cammy happily steals and crams on her own head. 

“Good look,” Roscoe laughs, and tugs on the brim. 

Neither of them care about either of the teams, or even about baseball, but they still cheer on the home team, clapping and hollering. Roscoe is pretty sure she saw a similar hat to the one Cammy is wearing on Stiles once, when he was younger, the bright blue fabric and red _C_ standing out in her mind. It must have been from Claudia, she realizes now. It was just the once, she knew Stiles well enough to know that his preferred team was the Mets. 

She wonders if Claudia came here as a girl with her parents, that hat squarely on her head as she ate hot dogs and drank Coke, and screamed her head off when they scored a run. 

(That’s happening right now, the ump’s voice a bellow of “ _Safe!_ ”, the crowd going wild.)

She smiles at the thought, and when Cammy turns to her she looks elated, eyes wide. It’s a good look on her, and Roscoe reaches down to thread their fingers together, grinning when Cammy squeezes her hand in response. 

\---

They stay in Chicago for longer than they mean to. Roscoe buys a journal and writes down everything she remembers Claudia telling John or Stiles (or her surfer boy, years and years before) about the city when she was in the Jeep. 

Sleeping isn’t something that they’ve ever had to do, but they do need somewhere to put their feet up, watch TV, drink tea and coffee when they don’t want to be out, surrounded by people, so they find a small apartment not too far from the stadium. In the same way that no one ever minds much when their cars go missing, their landlord doesn’t seem to mind much that the new tenants in 3C never pay rent. They’re not planning on staying too long, anyway. 

Roscoe tries to retrace some of Claudia’s footsteps, figure things out. Some of them are easy -- Wrigley, the Field, a resale shop she had specifically mentioned on the North side -- but some leave her wandering residential streets for hours, knowing that she’s never going to find the exact house she’s looking for. 

She comes home one night to find that Cammy’s stolen a street sign for her (“It’s your name, I _had_ to do it, Ro.”) and Roscoe feels like she should really make her return it, but she never quite gets around to it. They put it over the front door and Cammy sits back into the couch cushions, admiring her handwork with a smirk. 

Cammy makes too-strong black coffee in the mornings while Roscoe sits at the table sucking back tea. They split up, Cammy leaving to go running and Roscoe to explore, although they tend to find each other come lunch time. 

It’s snowing the day that they get to the last page of the journal, the one that’s not one of Claudia’s stories but Roscoe’s musing about Claudia going to Cubs games as a kid. They troop the eight blocks to Wrigley in the snow, Roscoe bundled up in a parka and a knitted hat with earflaps and pom-poms, Cammy bitching about the wetness seeping into her boots, her chin tucked into the collar of her coat against the cold. 

“I think I’m ready to move on, if you are,” Roscoe says. This is the longest she’s stayed in one place since Beacon Hills, something she didn’t think possible. Cammy’s been a rock solid presence next to her though, an anchor to help her from drifting. 

“Yeah,” Cammy says. “Wish it was still baseball season, we could go to one last game.”

“We’ll come back next spring,” Roscoe says, and Cammy looks pleased at that. 

\---

Cammy agrees to switch up cars, and grudgingly admits that it’s only fair that Roscoe get to pick this time. 

“Let me guess, you’re going to go for boring and practical,” Cammy mutters as they walk through snow that has become a slushy, icy mess on the sidewalks. Roscoe’s got a salvage place in mind, and Cammy had wanted to leave the Vette for the landlord as an apology for all that rent they skipped out on, so they’re back on their feet for the time being. 

Roscoe finds an older 3-door Rav4 between two beat-up delivery trucks at the salvage yard, all of them covered in a blanket of snow. Cammy helps her clear off enough snow so that they can see out of it, and when they get in the keys are waiting for them, already in the ignition. 

The heating works, and the wipers are still enough in one piece to get rid of the rest of the snow on the windshield. Their packs (and the stolen street sign) get tossed in the back, and they head south, around the bottom of the frozen-over lake. 

“I have to say, this is even _more_ boring than your usual fare,” Cammy says. “At least the Rabbit had some classic factor.”

“Don’t knock the 90s until you’ve tried them,” Roscoe says, and Cammy opens her mouth to respond before her jaw snaps shut. 

“Oh my god,” Cammy says, eyes wide. “I never experienced the 90s.” 

Roscoe offers her a conciliatory pat on the arm. 

\---

They head south and east. Roscoe’s got an itch at the back of her mind, one she knows won’t scratch out until she’s got sun and water and sand on her skin. She’s not sure she wants to go back to California though, not yet, and so they head for the Atlantic. 

“You can surf?” Cammy asks, looking over at Roscoe from behind her sunglasses. Today they’re a bright yellow pair of wayfarers. 

“I was a Jeep in the 80s,” Roscoe says. “Of course I can.”

Cammy just shrugs before going back to looking out the window, cheek pressed to the glass. It’s making her sunglasses sit skewed, but she doesn’t seem to care very much. 

They don’t talk, the radio speaking enough for both of them. They’re silent for long enough that they get all the way through American Pie and are edging up to the halfway point of The Boys of Summer -- it’s Roscoe’s turn to pick the music -- before Cammy finally speaks. 

“I miss him,” she says, and sounds almost surprised about it. “I actually miss the fucker.”

“That’s normal,” Roscoe says. 

“No, but like -- I spent so long just mourning him. I’m just getting past that now. And I miss him. You know he had a secret thing for Sonic milkshakes? We’d drive to Yuba City and he’d get a strawberry shake, and just sit and listen to music with the windows down.” 

“There’s a picture,” Roscoe says, smiling softly. Derek, angrily slurping down a strawberry shake.

“I miss the Sonic trips. And his music, and the way he’d always get pissed if someone was in front of him on an onramp and not going fast enough. I loved screaming up those curves, and he did, too.” 

Roscoe lets her talk, lets her tell stories of Derek and his leather jackets and taste in music. She talks about the times that he came in with blood or mud (or both) on his shoes, mucked up her floor mats, but he always took her in to get cleaned up when that happened. There was a car wash a few towns over that catered to the Hales for years and knew better than to ask what all the blood was about. 

Other people filter in and out of Cammy’s stories, the betas that Roscoe never really got to know (although she remembers Erica, Erica and her long fingers picking under her hood), the Argents, the McCalls. She tells the story of Stiles and Scott having to drive the Camaro back when everything was just getting started, laughing about how hilariously inept they were at it. 

“Hey, Stiles was a good driver,” Roscoe says. 

“Maybe with you,” Cammy says with a grin. “But he had no idea how to handle real horsepower.”

“Yeah, but remember the time Derek tried to drive me?” Roscoe says, and it’s her turn to smirk as Cammy rolls her eyes. “Pretty sure he stalled me just trying to get out of the driveway.”

“Hey, your clutch was a finicky, cruel mistress.”

“I beg to differ.”

“You would.”

Cammy changes the song, something by The 1975 that Roscoe doesn’t remember the name of, and she settles back, crossing her arms and sinking further into her seat. 

“Sorry for bringing up Stiles,” Cammy says after a while, so quiet she’s barely audible above the music.

“Don’t apologize, it’s fine, ” Roscoe says, and she actually means it. Every time she thinks of Stiles there’s less of an ache, and she thinks maybe things are going to be ok, eventually. 

\---

They leave plowed-under and snowed-over farm fields and cross into Kentucky and Tennessee, heading east from Nashville. Cammy makes them stop to try some barbeque just outside Knoxville, even though eating isn’t something they make a habit of doing. 

“You’re sure you’re not a werewolf?” Roscoe teases, watching as Cammy devours a rack of ribs, licking her fingers clean.

“They’re just _really_ good,” Cammy says around a mouth of food. Roscoe smiles, leaning back against the molded wooden bench. She hooks her arms over the back of it and watches people go by, the women with the teased-out hair, the guys with ripped jeans and beat-up boots, the college kids on their way to frat parties. The lights in the restaurant are low, and there are Christmas lights strung all over, making everything glow with the colored light. 

When Roscoe looks back at Cammy, she’s got the colors caught in her dark hair, red and green and blue and yellow. The half-darkness softens her edges, makes her look even younger than she is in her over-sized hoodie and biker jacket. 

“How are you doing?” Roscoe asks, and Cammy looks up at her, eyes a little wide and shining. 

“I’m good,” Cammy says. “Promise.”

Roscoe smiles at her, and when she reaches out to tuck some of Cammy’s hair behind her ear, she realizes how many miles they’ve come since Amarillo. 

They’ve got more to go, though, and they keep rolling east. The land rises up to meet them, hills and valleys, wide rivers and tall trees, all missing their leaves They take a day to go hiking, and the ground is hard under their feet, the dirt winter-tough. Cammy actually trades out her usual jacket for a parka, although it’s still black and fitted, the collar high up around her cheeks.

Cammy hauls herself up into a tall tree, hands and feet sure, and stands on a broad branch to stare out over the land. Roscoe stays firmly on the ground, leaning against the cold trunk and fiddling with her phone. She doesn’t really ever use it -- Cammy’s always with her these days -- but she does snap a few pictures of the grey forest and frozen leaves scattered across the ground. 

“I think we need somewhere warm,” Cammy says when they’re back in the car, rubbing their hands together to coax the blood back into them. 

“Getting there,” Roscoe promises.

\---

The water is freezing and there’s snow on the beach, but Roscoe promises the Outer Banks will warm up, come spring. She knows it’s an especially cold winter this year, but she also knows that winter will always end. 

“You better be right,” Cammy says, looking downright murderous about the temperature. She’s curled up under a blanket on the couch of the little house on the beach that they’d found. It was empty for the winter, forgotten in the cold months, and it had been happy to have them. 

Roscoe just shoves at her a bit, scooting her over, and joins her on the couch under the blanket. Cammy tucks herself into Roscoe’s side, under her arm, and they don’t move for the rest of the night. 

At the end of December they climb up to the roof with a couple minutes of the year left and watch as somewhere, miles off, a fireworks show goes off as the clock switches over to a whole new year. 

“Where’s my New Year’s kiss?” Cammy says. She smirks and bumps Roscoe with her hip. 

Roscoe raises an eyebrow at her, tucks her hands in her pockets, and leans forward to press a featherlight kiss to Cammy’s smirk. It wipes it away, her lips going slack, and when Roscoe pulls back Cammy is looking slightly shocked. 

“You’re missing the fireworks,” Roscoe says, smiling, and Cammy just nods mutely. 

“I wasn’t expecting you to actually do that,” Cammy says eventually, and moves close enough so that their shoulders are brushing. 

“You asked,” Roscoe says. She slips an arm around Cammy’s shoulders, and Cammy leans into her. 

“Can I get a repeat? I didn’t quite catch the first one.”

The second one is a little more than featherlight, as are the third and fourth. By the time they pull apart the fireworks are done, Cammy’s got her hands buried in Roscoe’s hair, and they’re both a little breathless. 

“Happy new year,” Roscoe says, kisses the corner of Cammy’s mouth. 

“Happy freaking new year _indeed_ ,” Cammy says with a smirk, and closes the distance between them again. 

\---

A wicked nor’easter swings in as February is fading into March, and the ocean races ahead of it, crashing into the beach. 

“You’re going to get yourself killed, FYI,” Cammy says, standing on the back deck and eyeing the waves with trepidation. Her hair is flying around in the wind, and her hood doesn’t want to stay on her head, so she’s holding it in place. 

“Can we even die?” Roscoe asks. She’s already halfway down the steps, board tucked under one arm. Cammy tilts her head to the side, chewing on her lip, seemingly thinking it out. 

“No fucking clue,” Cammy says. “We should have asked Baby.”

“Maybe she’ll hear, if you ask loud enough,” Roscoe says, deadpan, and Cammy raises her eyebrows at her. 

“You’ve officially lost it, old woman. Go surf, and if you die I don’t want to hear about it.”

There are a few locals out, but the beach is mostly quiet, everyone locked down for the storm. Roscoe trusts them all -- the two of them and the house -- to make it through ok. 

The waves are ice cold and rippling with the anger of the storm, power pulling at her each time she crashes through one. It makes her feel alive though, makes her remember when she was first learning how to be human with the ocean at her back and the sun as a halo above her head. The rumble of the waves sounds almost like her engine did, once, another lifetime ago. 

The first heavy drops of rain hit the beach as she does, and she turns her face up skyward, her eyes closed. She welcomes the rain falling across her buzzing skin, and she raises her free hand to catch some in her upturned palm. 

When she first started crashing headfirst in the waves, it was to run away from Stiles’ death. To remember Claudia’s a little bit less. Now, though, as she walks up the beach towards the house, she thinks that she’s doing this for herself, and only her. 

\---

Somewhere mid-March, they find out that the owners of the house are returning next month. Roscoe’s at the grocery store in town, stocking up on tea and coffee, when she runs into one of the neighbors and the woman mentions it. 

She’s going to be sad to leave, she’s settled into life here. The beach, the waves, the little house. 

Cammy’s just getting back from her run when Roscoe pulls up. Cammy’s standing at the door, holding something in her hands and looking confused. 

“What’s up?” Roscoe asks when she gets to the top of the steps, swinging the Rav4’s keys around and around on her finger. 

“We got mail,” Cammy says, holding it out for Roscoe to take. It’s a postcard, simply addressed to ‘Roscoe and Cammy, North Carolina’ in someone’s messy, looping handwriting. It’s post-marked from Lawrence, Kansas, and the message is brief, but it makes Roscoe grin. 

_As far as I know, nope, we can’t. Enjoy the immortality, girls. - Baby ( & Charlie)_

“What the hell are we going to do with forever?” Cammy asks, looking slightly worried. “That’s, well, _forever_.”

“We’ll think of something,” Roscoe says, kicking open the front door. “I’d say we’re pretty resourceful.”

“I’m gonna need a cooler car if we’re spending eternity here. Like, I’m thinking Saleen. At least.” 

Roscoe laughs and puts the postcard and the bag of groceries down before turning around to Cammy. 

“We’ll find you at least a Saleen,” Roscoe says, and then leans in to kiss Cammy, cupping her face in warm palms. Cammy backs her up against the island, hands on Roscoe’s hips under her shirt, and opens her mouth, lets Roscoe breathe her in. 

\---

They day they decide to leave, Cammy vanishes early in the morning and doesn’t return until just past 10, looking determined. 

“I have a surprise for you,” Cammy says. Roscoe raises her eyebrows at Cammy, but doesn’t ask, just puts down her tea and gets up. 

Cammy maneuvers her down the front steps, hands warm where they’re covering Roscoe’s eyes, and she can’t help the smile on her face when Cammy finally stops. 

“Ok,” Cammy says, taking her hands away. “Open ‘em.”

Roscoe does, and it takes a second for her brain to process what she’s seeing. There’s a Jeep parked right out front of the house. The blue’s a bit too dark and it’s a CJ-7, not a 5, but it still makes her memories curl and flash, quick still frames of Claudia and Stiles. 

“Oh,” she says, little more than an exhale, walks towards it with a hand outstretched. She runs her palm along the edge of the hood, up to the rearview mirror, hooks her fingers over the edge of the door. 

“I know it’s not quite the same,” Cammy says. “But it’s close.” 

“It’s perfect,” Roscoe says, and she means it with every last fiber of her being. She can feel the life of the car under her hand, the miles it’s travelled and the ones it still has to go. There’s a phantom rumble everywhere she touches, and it makes her skin sing. 

“Good,” Cammy says, and when Roscoe turns to her she’s got a blinding smile, the happiest Roscoe’s seen her in a long time. 

“You were supposed to pick the car this time, though,” Roscoe says. 

“I did,” Cammy says, and tucks her hands in her pockets, looking almost shy as she looks up at Roscoe, her head tipped forward. 

“Yeah,” Roscoe says, smiling and holding out a hand for Cammy. “I guess you did.” 

Driving the Jeep feels like a homecoming, and she wraps herself in the rumble of the engine and the road under the tires, runs her hands over the wheel and the dash and breathes deep. 

“I think I owe you a Cubs game,” Roscoe says. 

“You totally do,” Cammy says, pulling a pair of sunglasses from the glovebox (oversized and round with curls at the temples, this time) and slipping them on with a grin. 

\---

The Cubs lose. It’s the least shocking thing on the planet, and it doesn’t bug them much, or anyone else for that matter. They go to a bar afterwards, and everyone around them keeps saying things like ‘it’s early, we’ve got time still, this is _our_ year’, and Cammy and Roscoe just slip into a booth in the back and listen in. 

“It’s never going to be their year,” Cammy points out. 

“Hey, have faith,” Roscoe says. “We’re cars. Stranger things have happened than the Cubs getting to the World Series.” 

“I honestly doubt that we’re stranger than the Cubs getting to the World Series,” Cammy says, and Roscoe laughs, long and low and shaking her head.

They finish off a pitcher of beer and decide to call it a night, leaving the increasingly drunk bar patrons singing (‘ _hey, Chicago, what do you say?_ ’) slightly off key. 

They’re most of the way back to the car when Roscoe’s phone buzzes. She frowns, pulling it out of her jacket pocket to find that she’s got a text from a number she doesn’t know. When she sees it’s a Kansas area code, though, she can guess who it probably came from. 

It’s an address that turns out to belong to a small brick bungalow on a tree-lined street in Jefferson Park. It looks like a million other homes in the city and suburbs, but when they pull up out front, Roscoe immediately knows what it is. 

“This is where Claudia grew up,” she says, voice quiet. 

“It looks like a good place to grow up,” Cammy says. She reaches out to put a hand around the back of Roscoe’s neck. Roscoe turns into it, resting her cheek against the inside of Cammy’s wrist. 

“It was.” Roscoe heard all the stories, has a notebook stuffed at the bottom of her backpack full of them. 

She texts back a simple little _thanks_ , and they head out of the city, due west. 

“Where to?” Roscoe asks when Chicago’s skyline is nothing but a whisper in their rearview mirror. 

“Let’s go home,” Cammy says, voice strong.


End file.
